slave-marts of Timboctoo, Mourzook, and other oases ; whence they
become distributed, by Toukrik and Arab gellàls, throughout Maroc-
chine, Algerian, Tunisian and Tripolitan, territories, How, the
various negro populations of the above-named rivers are by no means
the most austral nations represented in these cities’ local slave-markets :
because such distinct stations are, in their turn, re-filled by caravans
from the interior; whose “ exploitation ” of nigritian prisoners stretches
backwards to Ashantee, Benin, Dahomey, Adamoua, &c. : whither
again converge endless radiations of still more inland slaves, whose
hunted-grounds reach southwards to an unknown extent, but certainly
as far as Congo. The consequence is, that in Algeria, as at
Cairo, numberless varieties of negroes, from many countries, are
represented, in human slave-basaars.,
Among these, a peculiar type is frequently seen even now, but was
far more abundant prior to the abolition of that piratical Deyship, by
the French in 1830. Of this race I clearly remember two huge and
ferocious specimens working about Mohammed Ali’s arsenal at
Alexandria for a long time, between 1827 and 1835 ; when I think
they must have succumbed to the great plague of the latter year. They
had been landed from the crews of an Algerine frigate and a corvette
that, sent as quota to the Pasha’s squadrons against the Greeks,
rotted their hulks out in our western harbor, after the fall of their
quondam owner at Algiers. Witness for years, and once assistant
retributor, of the brutality of these two Algerine negroes, their physiognomies
are ineffaceable from my memory ; being besides totally
distinct from any negro race brought down the Hile to Cairo.
It was, therefore, with satisfaction that I lately recognized the features
of my old acquaintances, in two plates, wholly distinct in origin,
representing the same type abiding in French Algeria : with the
only difference that the men I knew were almost black in color.
The •profile of one is fac-simile-ed in Ho. 26 of our Tableau under
the name of “ Saharran-negro partly because this individual, or his
parents, must have been brought across the great desert, and partly
between myself and others,—from Dec. 1850, at Philadelphia, down to June 1856, at Paris-
relative to this grand experiment of naturalizing the Arabian camel, amidst its homogeneous
climatic and other conditions, in the south-western States and Territories of the United
States on this continent.
I hope soon to have a little more leisure than just at this moment ; when it will afford me
great pleasure, the public much entertainment, and the H o n o r a b l e M r . M a r s h peculiar
gratification, to show how easy it was to “ see through a millstone, after somebody had made
a hole in it,” as concerns the successful importation of these Camels—no less than this
gentleman’s astounding mesmerio clairvoyance in guessing at every fact and idea contained
in that fac-simile copy of my -f Remarks” aforesaid, during the period that it lay locked
up in a patent Salamander safe. Philadelphia, 10th February, 1857. — G. R. G., “ (formerly)
United States Consul at Cairo.”
because numerous historical analogies lead me to infer, that it is
towards Senegal that bis typical family should be sought for. Its
original colored drawing, much larger in size, being one of about
forty beautifully-executed portraits taken on the spot by the Commission
scientifique d’Algérie, is now suspended in the G-aïerie Anthropologique
of the Parisian Muséum. Published by the Chief of that expedition,
the late Bory de Saint-Vincent,414 my copy has been traced
upon stone directly from Bory de St. Vincent’s plate, in my possession.
He thus briefly describes this head’s history :—
“ Ho. IH ., finally, is the E thiopian type. This head was that o f
a bandit native of the Soodàn [negro-land], killed in the Sahel [Atlantic
slopes towards the Sahara], where one of the sabre-cuts with
which he was smitten shows, over the left parietal, how much more
considerable the thickness of the bones of the cranium is in negroes
than in other men. * * *
“ In disposing,” proceeds our author, “the bony cases [skulls] that
I present to the Academy, upon the same plane one after another,
we are first struck by the manner in which, on starting from the Atlantic
type [or Berber, -see a semplar gradation in our Tableau, Ho.
22], wherein the facial angle is almost a right one, the gradual prominence
of the upper jaw becomes considerable. This elongation is
such in the Ethiopian, that the resembla'nce of his skeleton to that
of the large monkeys becomes striking \ubi supra] : at the base of a
suffieiently-high, but laterally compressed frontal region, the supraorbital
ridges project almost as considerably as those of a middle-
aged Orang. Other bony prominences, not less marked, crown the
temporal region at the attachments of the temporal muscles ; a very
pronounced depression exists at the root of the nooe, of which the
bones proper are also the shortest, and so disposed forwards that
their situation becomes nearly horizontal. Certain airs of animality
result from this, osteological ensemble ; and, the facial traits not being
less strange, the breadth of the nose with its widely-open wings, and
the prodigious thickness of the lips, whose lower one seems to be
quasi-pendent, impress upon this Ethiopian's profile the aspect of a
sort of muzzle.”
Following this famed anthropologist’s suggestion,.I now submit
to the reader’s inspection, four wood-cuts (A, B, C, D, on next page)!
Few remarks suffice to establish authenticity. The palpable ana-
414 Sur VAnthropologie de l’Afrique Française (read at the Académie des Sciences, 30
June, 1845)—extract from the Magasin de Zoologie, d'Anatomie comparée et de Paléontologie •
Paris, Oct. 1845; pp. 13-4; and Plate Mammifères, PI. 61, figs. “ No. III. Type Éthio-
Pûn." B ory de St. Vincent is the well-known polygenist; author of A ’Somme (Homo).
zoologique sur le Genre Humain; of which I am only acquainted with the 2d edition-
Paris, 2 vols. 18mo., 1827.